One for All SmartControl Motion

With this new One for All SmartControl Motion universal remote you can control your TV and other audiovisual devices with a mere flick of the wrist. The remote tracks the movement of your hand and translates your gestures into commands such as switching channels, muting the volume, pausing, etc.

Apart from its motion-sensing capabilities, this remote is very similar to the SmartControl PS3 we've already tested. It's therefore a well-made and well-finished device with buttons that fall comfortably under your thumb. It also has the same soft-touch, non-slip coating on the back.

The remote runs on four AAA batteries. Unfortunately, though, as is always the case with One for All remotes, batteries aren't supplied as standard.

You can control up to six devices with this remote, switching between them using the arrow keys and the individual device keys on the remote. Obviously, you don't have to set up the TV key to control your TV—you could, for example, use the DVD key to control a Blu-ray player if you like.

Other combinations are available in the manual

Activities (macros) can be programmed to three buttons. For example, you can programme the 'films' button to set the volume buttons to control the amplifier, to select the correct TV video entry, and to set the playback buttons to control your Blu-ray player. There are several pre-set combinations to choose from and these are clearly explained in the manual. This system works pretty well too, considering the remote doesn't have a built-in screen.

However, the activities can't be used to switch off or on all the relevant devices in one go. To do that, you'll have to set up some macros. You could, for example, assign the 'TV ON', 'BR ON', 'Amp ON' functions to the 'MCE' button.

Old-School Set-Up

Unlike Logitech's Harmony universal remotes, the SmartControl Motion can't be hooked up to a computer for configuration. There are two ways of adding a device you want to control. First of all, there's the good old list of codes. Although a huge list of codes is supplied, a good few popular devices are still missing, particularly set-top boxes, cable/satellite boxes and media tanks. However, One for All does have a regularly updated online database which contains a lot more device codes. Just enter your product's brand and name to search for it in the database.

The second method involves manually 'teaching' the remote to recognise a device for which there's no code. In such cases, you need to use the device's original remote, pressing each button followed by a button on the One for All to register each command to a button on the universal remote.